Saudade
by apodixis
Summary: Kara Thrace returns to the fleet at the battle of the Ionian Nebula and starts the path of discovery to understanding that she isn't who she thinks she is.


_saudade: a deep emotional __state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return._

When Kara returns from the dead, there's no explanation for it other than the screams of 'cylon' from the people around her. It's not just from those who didn't know her that well even though they're the loudest, it's from Lee and Adama and the frakking President who she went back to Caprica for. They don't shout it, but it feels worse than the ones who share their opinions at full volume. Even when Cottle's cleared her, their eyes carry the weight of the accusations and the truth they don't want to believe in. She doesn't believe them, not for a second, and Lee's reassurance in his words and his mouth pressed to hers while they're within the dingy quarters of her jail cell tell her she has to hold strong.

On the Demetrius, she feels a pricking under her skin, behind her eyes, in her very movements. It's nothing she can explain, like an odd form of deja vu, sensations she's sure she has never felt before, but feel familiar just the same. There's something she's missing and as her nights turn sleepless and she paints her dreams above where she should rest, Kara starts to doubt the truth and strength she found in Lee before the Admiral had given her this ship and crew. Even Sam feels strange to her when he's inside of her or just talking _at_ (never _to_) her. It's like she's looking down at herself, at her body, detached and lost. Something's definitely not right.

Leoben arrives and the feeling swells. She can't ignore it or push it away, and when she looks at the Two, Kara knows he feels it as well. A connection, a bridge, a surprising shortcut across a gap of space. He's closer than ever to something he's been looking for the whole of his however short or long, repetitive life of being born over and over again. He guides her hand to finish that painting and though some innate part of her crawls at the closeness—the feel of his skin to hers without putting up a fight, warm breath against the back of her neck, the ownership in the way he holds his hand to her side—Kara just lets him. There's something she's forgetting and maybe, she thinks, he can remind her.

They find Earth, or what's left of it. Kara doesn't just see the soil and ruins, instead she sees the charred remains of a body that used to be hers. There's no understanding how it got there or why, and even Leoben's abandonment strikes her hard. She's alone when she watches her body burn and as she breathes in the fumes of her remains and closes her eyes, she tries to make sense of it. There's none to be had, at least not anything that's obvious and outright, but it sows the seeds for what's coming. She isn't her. Kara Thrace, whoever that girl is or was, she's dead. And what or who the person that stands on the barren planet is now, she doesn't yet understand.

The time that follows passes her easily, alone with her thoughts while everyone else treads water waiting to die. Earth's disappointment is thick in the air. Everything flies by and there's comfort in the routine on Galactica, even if Kara knows now that the clothes she wears never actually belonged to her. She's an impostor, whether it means she has silica pathways or something else. She's not real, but the artificial world around her keeps her tethered.

She never feels more alive, like the girl that used to be, than in the middle of the mutiny. It's easy to ignore everything else with a gun in her hand and Lee at her wing. Anger and determination guide her until she watches the blood flow from Sam's wound. All that was before gets replaced by the grief and sorrow she feels at nearly losing the man her memories tell her is her husband. Kara drowns herself in it, lying at his bedside even when she's sure she can still taste Lee in her mouth. The two of them, they're her rocks, even if she knows they don't belong to her. Not really.

Before Sam heads to surgery, Kara thinks she'll finally have an answer. Maybe she is just a copy and he'll know the truth, but he denies her that sliver of hope in the end. Now while he lies in Life Station, healing from a wound and subsequent surgery he'll never really ever recover from, Kara drinks at Joe's Bar, filling the empty pieces of herself with alcohol. The ping of piano keys drill into her head like it's a physical pain, but it calls to her anyway. She doesn't have a choice when she sits down at the piano beside the other man and there's a harmony between them that transcends everything she's ever felt. It's peace, peace in a way that makes so much sense it nearly hurts. When she finds herself alone afterward, she thinks that finally she remembers why she was sent in the other woman's place.

There's no question of the coordinates that bring them to their final destination. This is why she's here, why she existed at all.

All around them is beautiful green grass and blue skies, animals grazing in the brush while birds fly up above them in flocks, but Kara isn't outside to immerse herself in it. Instead, she closes herself away within the coated canvas of one of the tents they've set up on the ground. Lee finds her there eventually and much like Leoben always said about everything, she's seen this. She knew he would come to her, sit beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and breath out that sigh of relief.

They don't say anything for the longest time and Kara lets her eyes close and dream about the last few weeks and months, the memories that are really hers and not belonging to the girl that was. She can feel every time Lee's lips touched her skin or drew his palm to her cheek. His words of comfort and reassurance still sing freshly in her ears. He may not have said it outright, but all of those things were said in love. All at once, Kara feels thankful and guilty. Thankful for having ever had the chance to feel another soul so willingly intertwine himself with her. Guilty because she knows that they're words meant for someone else. Whoever he thinks she is, she's not it.

She doesn't ruin it, not just because he needs this, but because she knows she needs it, too. For bringing his people to Earth, she thinks she's earned the moment of selfishness. Kara turns into him and presses her palm to his cheek, rough with days of stubble growth. Her other hand strokes through the lengths of his thick head of hair and she smiles at him even when it hurts because she knows what's coming next. She's seen it. They're impossibly close, his arms around her as she nuzzles her cheek into his and he fists the back of her over-sized fatigues.

"Lee."

"Kara," he replies.

Her body nearly shakes at his single word. He says it with such affection because he's unaware of what's to come. To Lee, they've finally found their new home and the world stands before them. Sam's headed into the sun to cover their tracks and his wife is dead by her own hand. Forever, they'll be mourning for those that they've lost, but maybe now they have the chance to start over together. He's an open book in ways he doesn't even know. Kara can't see his face, but in other ways she can smell it on his skin, feel it in the tightness of his muscles. He has a future already planned out for the two of them and she would give anything to see it with him, even if she knows she doesn't deserve it.

"Always loved you." Her speech trembles and she's careful with her wording because she neither wants to lie to him nor give herself away so close to the end. She can't go, though, without him knowing the truth. Even if the woman who's dead had never been able to say it nearly as much as she felt it—and she knows she did, can recall all the times that woman had the words on her lips but held them back—she has to do it for her. Kara would have wanted that, she thinks.

They say goodbye to his father and Roslin and stand alone in the field together. She's seen this, too. This is where she says goodbye, where she'll get that final emotion of completion. Lee's talking about the mountains he wants to climb, the world he wants to explore, when she finally feels it. A gust of wind cuts by them and brings with it that sense of fullness she's been driving towards the last few months. It was what she was looking for, what was pulling her here even when she didn't yet know what she was seeking out or understand what her purpose was.

Every question she's had since she rode that brand new Viper into the hangar deck is answered. What she is. Why she's here. Who sent her. Where she's going now that she's done. She stares at the back of Lee's body and though she knows she shouldn't feel the longing for him that she does, she can't leave him like this. Alone, abandoned, forgotten. So just as she feels that pull to finally go, to return to wherever her home actually is, she makes a silent plea on his behalf.

—

Lee turns around and just like that, she's gone. He whips his head about looking for her, but he can see for miles around them and knows she couldn't have made it that far in only a few seconds. He told her in the memorial hallway days ago that he didn't care what she was and he meant it, but only now does he really understand all of it. The Kara that came back to him in that nebula was never the one he knew. She looked like her, talked like her, hell, she'd even felt like her. Underneath it all, though, some part of him had known the truth and continued to grieve for the loss even with the facsimile standing nearby.

He whispers his promise to both his Kara and the one that had existed in the interim as another breeze rolls by, and finally, Lee starts his trek back towards the tent he'd shared earlier with her ghost. The last place he'd traced his hands down her back or through her long hair. Lee thinks that maybe he's in a state of shock because although he feels the pain of her absence, his tears fail to come. His eyes are on his feet as he approaches the limply hanging flaps at the tent's doorway and just as he stretches his hand forward to push the heavy fabric aside, another hand beats him to it, this one moving from the inside on out.

Like a vision, Kara steps forward.

This time, there's no question about who or what she is. He can see it in her eyes. This is the one that always belonged to him. The one that made love to him on New Caprica, double-dog-dared him on a kitchen table, smeared red paint with him across a celebratory helmet, saved him from himself an endless number of times. He gathers her into the crook of one of his arms, the other brushing her hair back, not even thinking of stopping as their mouths meet together. She responds with the same enthusiasm he shows, and they only pull back when feeling their cheeks wet with a mix of both of their tears.

"How are you here?" Lee asks without an expectation of a real answer.

"I don't know." Kara's head shakes side to side despite how close their faces still are to one another. There's a conflict inside of her because some of the corners of her memories don't feel right, like the perfect mesh things usually fit into is slightly off. She doesn't question it, though. She'd be a fool to. "But it feels like I never left."


End file.
